Advantages And Disadvantages Of Plastics

There is a simple choice that many of us individuals have to make on a daily or weekly basis. Imagine yourself at the supermarket when you are faced with that same old choice: paper or plastic? Which one do you choose and why? And furthermore, which one should you choosing? Many os us don’t stop to think of such a simple decision being so impactful on the environment, but recently there has been a lot of attention regarding the packaging that we choose to use. Environmentalists, commercial businesses, and government officials are especially concerned with this issue because of the fact that landfill capacity in this country is decreasing, and because containers and packaging account for 29.6% of the volume in of the municipal solid waste in the United States, according to a study by Franklin Associates LTD

Both paper and plastic bags cause stress on the environment. So, do we as a society choose to clear-cut forests and process pulp and bleach it with chlorine to make paper bags, or do we use oil to make our plastic bags? According to watershedmedia.org “About half the total volume of America’s municipal solid waste is packaged - at least 800 pounds per person each year - and the “upstream” costs in energy and resources used to make packaging are even more alarming” (2014). To determine which packaging you should choose when at the supermarket, both sides will be compared and discussed.

First we are going to take a look at where brown paper bags come from. Paper comes from trees - many, many tress. The industry of logging is huge and the process that is used to get that tree into a paper bag at the grocery story is a long one that usually takes a heavy toll on the planet. The trees are first found, and then marked and cut dow...

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...reak, which leads to a lower-quality product. Essentially, plastic is most often down cycled into less functioning products, which means that its hard to make new plastic bags out of old plastic bags.

Further knowledge of the using and recycling of the different kinds of bags can be gained by looking at the facts about emission, overall energy, and costs of production and recycling. According to the life-cycle analysis by Franklin Associates, Ltd, our plastic bags create fewer airborne emissions and require less energy during the life cycle of both types of bags per 10,000 equivalent uses. This means that plastic creates 9.1 cubic pounds of solid waste versus 45.8 cubic pounds for paper, and plastic creates 17.9 pounds of atmospheric emissions versus 64.2 pounds for paper, as well as plastic creating 1.8 pounds of waterborne waste versus 31.2 pounds for paper.